W e cruised on MSC Opera 2 years ago. We had an excellent holiday. The ship was new,very glamorous,The food was excellent,very friendly staff.a couple of formal nights but the Italians like to dress smartly on casual nights. We dined with other English people,good company.Only problem-announcements in 4 different languages which is a bit boring,entertainment good but difficult to suit all nationalities.Can recommend.

I've never been on the melody but ahve sailed with MSC times. The food is Italian and I found it mostly good, They always have alternatives such as steaks, salmon etc if you fancy a chnge from Italian dishes. They usually pick a different region of Italy each night and will have the specialities from that region, so even although there is always pasta nd risotton evernight as one of the 6 courses to choose from, their is a fair degree of variety. On a weeks cruise they will usually have 2 Gala (formal) nights, 3 informal and 2 casual. It's traditioonal dining with 2 sittings. Not sure about the melody, but there newer bigger ships all have 2 restaurants and you get allocated to one of them and sit at the same table each evening. Choice of table size is usually4 5 or 8 although sometimes they do 2. Although Brits tend to be in the minority, they will seat you with other English speaking passengers.All the officers and entertainment party are Italian but also speak English. All announcements andare in English, german, french, Italina ansd Spanish so things like the compulsory muster stsation/lifeboat practice take a bit of time! I enjoy cruising with them as I like the the mix of lots of different nationalities.

We travelled with MSC last year on Musica - could not fault the ship, although food was not up to standard. Does not compare to RCI or P&O which were both far superior. The whole dining room experience was disappointing. We had a lovely meal in the a la carte restaurant - a small cover charge was well worth the experience. Italians rude. would push people out of the way (literally) to get to where they wanted. Even the americans were moaning about their rudeness. Would not cruise with this line again.